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Letter: Owning Snakes Should Be Illegal

I picked up a small, screened box with a yellow cobra inside when the Fish and Wildlife agent said, “Put it down, that one is a spitting cobra.” Another time, I heard a frantic yell from the warehouse, and that same agent and I began chasing down about 100 small, reticulated pythons that had broken out of a crate. When we were done, there was a large garbage can half-full of writhing snakes.

I will always remember the shipment of cobras going to the Varmints and Critters pet store in Texas. The king cobras were priced at $50, and the regular size was $5. The idea that it is just fine for people to buy and own exotic, poisonous or constrictor snakes as pets needs to stop.

Southern Florida is now overrun with Burmese pythons that were dumped when their owners realized that they were potentially dangerous. A hurricane also released dozens of reticulated pythons from a destroyed warehouse. There is already a large drop in the populations of raccoons, bobcats and even small deer in the Everglades. There is a video where the wildlife officer goes into a garage and finds a Gaboon viper that the kids had been playing with.

Would the cold weather in Arkansas kill off any of the exotics? We have enough native poisonous snakes that survive so we wouldn’t want to risk it. We need to pass laws that outlaw these very dangerous snakes.